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It was a busy Saturday on the European sporting calendar, with a Nations League thriller at Wembley, a Laver Cup swing that shifted the balance of power, a European Championship volleyball final decided in Milan and a world title won on the roads of Montreal. France 24's sports team rounds up the weekend's main results.
The headline result came at Wembley, where Spain began their Nations League campaign with a hard-fought 3-2 win over England. La Roja found themselves 2-1 down at half-time in front of a home crowd, and needed a second-half recovery to salvage the opening fixture of their international season — and, more importantly, to keep alive a remarkable unbeaten run.
The match was turned by two second-half goals from substitutes Álex Baena and Mikel Oyarzabal. Both were introduced from the bench, and both made an immediate impact, which speaks well of a Spanish squad whose depth has become one of its defining characteristics under the current coaching cycle. Fresh legs and attacking energy proved decisive after the interval.
Oyarzabal's strike, his third of the evening, was the winner, and he was pictured celebrating the goal that completed the comeback. It was a useful reminder of the value of a squad that can change its shape and output without losing quality: Spain did not need to rebuild from scratch in London, only to add a different kind of energy at the right moment.
The broader significance lay in the streak. With the win in London, Spain extended their unbeaten run to 39 matches — a run that now spans several seasons and competitions, and one that has become a talking point in its own right among coaches, players and statisticians. Sustaining that kind of consistency across qualifiers, friendlies and major tournament matches is notoriously difficult, and defeats tend to arrive in clusters rather than one at a time.
A Nations League opener on the road against England is about as demanding a test as a side could set itself. England will have learned plenty from the collapse, particularly from the interval at which they surrendered their advantage, while Spain can count a valuable three points and a morale boost before the next round of fixtures.
Elsewhere in London, the Laver Cup delivered a different kind of drama. Carlos Alcaraz led Team Europe's comeback on day two with a straight-sets win over Taylor Fritz in the singles competition. The three-set victory was significant less for the margin than for the momentum it handed to Europe.
That result leaves Europe with a 7-5 lead heading into the final day of action on Sunday. With two points still available in a dead rubber and the format demanding that players turn out for a minimum number of matches, the lead is narrower than it looks — a one-day lead in a team event is rarely secure. Alcaraz's win, however, has put Europe in the driving seat and gives the team a target to defend at home.
The Laver Cup has a habit of producing momentum swings, and Alcaraz's contribution on day two is exactly the kind of heavyweight point a leading side needs. Fritz will be quick to point to the moments that got away, but in a team competition the scoreboard only remembers the outcome — and Europe now go into Sunday with the advantage.
In volleyball, France were beaten by defending champions Poland in the European Championship final on Saturday evening in Milan. Les Bleus were ultimately defeated in four sets, a scoreline that suggests a contest stretched beyond the initial stages before Poland's experience told.
For France, the defeat is a significant one, delivered by the team that owns the title. A four-set final is generally decided by small margins — a single run of points, a rotation, a block — and losing it on home-soil-soaked European soil in front of a Milan crowd will sting. The rebuilding of French men's volleyball in particular has been a long-running project, and finals of this magnitude are precisely the benchmark against which progress is measured.
Demi Vollering, meanwhile, rounded off a near-perfect road cycling campaign by claiming her first World Championships title in Montreal on Saturday. At 29, the Dutch rider has produced a season of rare quality, and the rainbow jersey is the most prestigious single item on a palmarès that already includes some of the biggest prizes in the sport.
The details of her 2026 season are the story in themselves. Vollering won both the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia — the two most famous stage races on the planet, and both within the same season — alongside a string of other major races. Adding a World Championships title to that collection is the sort of achievement that very few riders ever manage, and it crowns a campaign that will be studied for years as a benchmark.
Winning three of the four biggest one-day and stage-race targets in a single season demands everything: climbing form, time-trialling ability, recovery, tactical intelligence and consistency. Vollering's rivals have been open about the difficulty of racing against a rider of her calibre, and Montreal was billed as the final test of whether she could close out such a season with the most decorated jersey in the sport.
Taken together, Saturday's results share a common thread: rewards going to sides and individuals who absorbed setbacks. Spain trailed and responded; Europe trailed on the Laver Cup and responded; France trailed Poland and did not. Vollering, by contrast, arrived in Montreal with momentum already on her side and simply converted it.
One more result that will shape the coming week falls outside Saturday's programme but remains on the sport's agenda: Europe's top domestic leagues have been pushing for FIFA reform, adding pressure on the organisation's leadership. With Zidane's first match in Turkey already behind them and new managers across Germany, the Netherlands and France making their debuts, the international side of the game is entering a period of both transition and scrutiny.
For now, though, the weekend belongs to a Spanish comeback at Wembley, a European surge at the Laver Cup, a Polish volleyball crown and a Dutch world champion. Sunday's Laver Cup finale is the next stop, and with Europe holding a 7-5 advantage, nobody involved expects the closing day to be anything other than tense.
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